How Cindy Started Selling Pilates Grip Socks

We are familiar with Cindy Laufs as the powerhouse behind Hustle Media, managing influencer campaigns and building brands. She has since changed to Swallow Marketing and started her own business selling… you guessed it.. pilates grip socks! If you want to hear the story behind that, keep reading, and she will explain it in her own words.

Pilates Grip socks on two women holding yoga mats

The backstory: Pilates helped my back

I came to Pilates because my back was a disaster. Years of pain, limited mobility, and a long list of things I’d tried that didn’t work. Pilates was the last resort. Then it fixed everything.

What started as rehab turned into a full obsession. The reformer became my therapist. Post-class coffee became my personality. I became part of a community again. At almost 50, my world was getting smaller. Pilates made it bigger.

Pilates socks were boring

And somewhere in between, I became the person who notices what everyone’s wearing on their feet.

Here’s the thing about me. I’ve always been the one who curates everything. The outfit, the space, the playlist, the random vintage find that nobody else wanted but I somehow needed. So when the only pilates grip socks in South Africa were boring, basic, and forgettable, it felt personal. The same ones on rotation. The ones that looked like they gave up before the warm-up. We’d never accept that level of boring in our activewear. Why were we settling for it on our feet?

I love Pilates. I love barre. I love yoga. I love the shake, the pulse, the flow, the post-class coffee where everyone pretends they aren’t dying. What I didn’t love was pulling on the same tired pair of grippy socks every single time. With limited options out there, my vision was to start not just another sock brand, but a cult brand and online community.

Nobody tells you what it actually takes to get a sock brand off the ground. Bulk ordering from overseas. International shipping. SARS compliance. And the mistakes. The list of mistakes I’ve made is longer than the actual stock I have on hand. But I’ve learned. The hard way. And that is how we grow.

How the glimmer of pilates socks lit a fire in her

Pilates socks on a woman doing a yoga pose

I’ve run a marketing agency for more than 10 years and I still do, just at a slower pace. After years of burnout and recovery, the final one was so severe I was bedridden for a month. That was the wake-up call. I was ready for something that felt more like me and less like a machine. Something built by someone who actually wears the product, obsesses over the details, and genuinely believes your socks should match your energy. So I did something about it. I called it Gripsie. Something that added a little colour into people’s lives and sparked glimmers of joy. To this day I am still surprised at how a simple pair of socks can make somebody so happy. Socks! It truly is about the little things.

Pilates grip socks that give a vibe to life

From the classics that go with every set to the bold ones that steal the room. Pilates grip socks, barre socks, yoga socks. For every mood, every outfit, every class. Socks you actually want to show off before the warm-up even starts. Socks that make the girl next to you lean over and ask, “Wait, where did you get those?”

The grip is non-negotiable. The vibe is all yours.

Gripsie was built on one belief: your grip socks should be as obsession-worthy as the class you wear them to. For the girls who take their practice seriously. For the ones who book the 6am class and still show up cute. For the ones who know that what’s on your feet says something about who you are. Even in downward dog. Even in a downward spiral, because life is still lifing and things are still hard, but you have your hour of peace, connection, and calm, framed by a cute pair of grippy socks.

When I’m not working on Gripsie, I’m on the reformer, hunting for vintage finds, curating spaces nobody asked me to curate, running my boutique marketing agency and stressing about deadlines, and being a dedicated dog mum to four rescue dogs and a cat named after Sauvignon Blanc who has zero chill. Can we do it all? I’m starting to think we don’t have to. Doing it all means putting ourselves first to show up better for everything else we have going on.

I’m not here to build a corporate sock brand. I’m here because I wanted cuter socks and figured other people probably did too.

And it’s a bit of a cult. We’d like you in it.

Cindy